Re: Re: NZC: Ginger Baker: "Cream will never reunite"

["john tyra" <green_acres1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good points about the house P.A's Tim..

Back in the mid to late 60's when Cream were playing, Solid State PA amps 
were rare, not very high power, not very reliable and did not sound very 
good so most bands, like Cream, played straight through multiple stacks of 
100W tube amps, like Marshalls, and 4X12 speaker cabinets...

Here is an excerpt from the Tonequest Clapton Special issue Spt. 2001 on 
their amps...

"Bruce and Clapton acquired 100W Marshall Plexi stacks in 1966 as Cream 
rehearsals began. Intially, each of them were playing through dual 4X12 
cabinets but two additinal cabinets would be added to their rigs around 
1967. The additional cabinets would be used or left idle on stage depending 
on the size of the venue. Clapton stepped up to two Marshall 1950 100W Plexi 
Superlead amps in 1967, while Bruce acquired a custom 200W Marshall Major. 
For the Albert Hall farewell concert, Bruce used a 100W Plexi Marshall and 
Clapton used an 8 knob1959T Mashall Superlead"

Later in the article Tim Dowd, then an engineer at Atlantic records, 
recollects getting a call from Ahmet Ertegun to come down and record Cream's 
Disraeli gears album. He did not know Cream and when he got to the studio 
roadies were setting up multiple Marshall stacks. When the group arrived he 
was amazed that all the gear was for just three musicians. The room they 
were recording in was rather large, 35'X45", and he was so worried about the 
drummers, Ginger Baker, hearing he put two of the Marshall stacks all the 
way down the opposite dead end of the room away from Baker. He commented 
that it was so loud in the studio he would put on a pair of headphones to 
protect his hearing when he went in during a take. So those guys just loved 
to play loud............

Her is a great site of Cream pictures where you can see Jack's and Eric's 
multiple Marshall stacks.....some pretty small rooms and they each have two 
100W Marshall stacks each!!!

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/oldtimers/TourPics.html

I had the chance to play through a friends 100W Marshall stack one day back 
in the 70's and the volume was staggering with the amp volume dimed and that 
was only a single 100W head and 2- 4X12 cabinets so I can't imagine how loud 
it must be standing  in front of  multiple 100W Marshall stacks!!

The thing about the old Marshall's were you had to play them turned all the 
way up "dimed' before you got the desired distortion and sustain. Back then 
they did not have the overdrive pedals or attenuators we have today which 
lets a player overdrive the preamp to get the same desired tone at much 
lower volume so they always had the amps at max volume..........It is no 
wonder many of 60's/70's rockers have hearing problems............